Effective resource management is especially critical when communities are confronted with a scarcity of the resource in question. Resources include electricity, water, gas and natural resources such as oil. The definition of resources may also be extended to include water quality and air quality, since adequate water quality and air quality are necessary to support a self-sustaining environment.
Resource management is necessary so that systems can optimize the use of a limited resource. Currently, there are various systems for managing resources in various environments such as buildings, apartments, industrial facilities, and computing systems. Regretfully, these solutions have not been extended to individuals or small businesses, which account for a substantial portion of each utility's customers.
For example, when the usage of a resource such as electricity becomes strained in response to supply conditions, the result may be a “rolling blackout.” A rolling blackout refers to an intentionally engineered electrical power outage that is caused by insufficient electrical power resources to meet demand for electricity. In California, rolling blackouts are triggered by unusually hot temperatures that cause a surge in demand resulting in heavy use of air conditioning. There are three emergency stages that identify the severity of the problem. In a Stage 1 emergency, a general call for voluntary conservation is issued. A Stage 2 emergency results in power being temporarily cut off to certain large users that have agreed to this arrangement in exchange for lower rates. When a Stage 3 emergency is issued, electric to one of the fourteen California grids is shut off for a fixed period of time that can range from 60 minutes to 2½ hours. If after this period of time the Stage 3 emergency still exists, power is restored to this grid but then the next grid in the sequence is blacked out, and so on, until the situation is stabilized. Thus, the blackout “rolls” from one grid to the next.
In California, each customer's electric bill includes the number of the power grid (from 1 to 14) that customer belongs to; this gives customers at least some advance notice of when their electricity might be turned off in the event of a Stage 3 emergency. The grids are set up in such a manner as to ensure that a large percentage of customers in the same neighborhood would not be blacked out concurrently, which could invite looting and other related problems. Normal electricity customers can fall within the areas reserved for emergency use if they are near a hospital or other critical infrastructure, in which case their electricity bill will indicate a power grid of 99 and they will not be affected by rolling blackouts.
One mechanism that is used to encourage customers to reduce demand and thereby reduce the peak demand for electricity is referred to as demand response (DR). DR refers to a mechanism to manage the demand for customers in response to supply conditions. For example, electricity customers must reduce their consumption at critical times or in response to market prices.
In demand response applications, customers shed loads in response to a request by a utility or market price conditions. Services are reduced according to a preplanned load prioritization scheme during critical timeframes. An alternative to load shedding is on-site generation of electricity to supplement the power grid. Under conditions of tight electricity supply, demand response can significantly reduce the peak price and, in general, electricity price volatility.
Generally, demand response technologies detect the need for load shedding, communicate the demand to participating users, automate load shedding, and verify compliance with demand-response programs. These systems are complex and costly to implement because they rely on controlling the usage of the resource.
Thus, there is a need for a system and device that does not rely on controlling the usage of the resource, that is cost effective to implement, and that satisfies the goals of a demand response application.